Tag: taxes

US Releases $870 Million in Military Aid for Taiwan, Angering China

The US has quietly released $870 million in funding for military aid to Taiwan after it was briefly paused during the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid.

Reuters first reported on February 21 that the US released the military aid for Taiwan as part of $5.3 billion in exemptions from the foreign aid pause. China, which strongly opposes US military support for Taiwan, reacted to the news on February 26.

“We are deeply concerned over relevant reports,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian. “China has all along opposed US military assistance to China’s Taiwan region, which has severely violated the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiqués, undermined China’s sovereignty and security interests, and sent a gravely wrong signal to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”

Lin added that China urges the US to “stop arming Taiwan and undermining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”

The US has always sold weapons to Taiwan since Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei as part of a normalization agreement with Beijing in 1979, but it wasn’t until 2023 that the US began providing US-funded military aid, a step that marked a significant escalation. In 2024, President Biden signed off on more than $1 billion in military aid for Taiwan.

The US military support is done in the name of deterrence, but it has only escalated tensions in the region. During a press conference on February 27, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian issued a strong warning against US involvement in Taiwan, which has been encouraged by the island’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

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What Trump can Learn from McKinley’s Tariffs

If Trump is to be successful as regards tariffs, he must look at President William McKinley’s successes and mistakes.

As a young, struggling congressman, William McKinley’s friend President Rutherford Hayes told him to specialize and develop expertise in tariff policy. McKinley’s first legislative effort as a congressman was to increase tariffs in 1877. McKinley rose quickly to chair of the Ways and Means Committee. McKinley was instrumental in forming a Tariff Commission and became a framer of the 1882 Tariff Bill.

His chairmanship led to the passage of the famous “McKinley” Tariff Act of 1890. The Tariff of 1890 went too far and lacked the appropriate guardrails to address inflation and potential trade wars. The 1890 Tariff roughly added a 50% tariff on all manufacturing imports. McKinley’s colleagues overruled him, following the model of tariffs as revenue producers versus McKinley’s model of protectionism for American industry. The short-term adverse effects and political impact cost McKinley and many other Republicans their seats two years later.

McKinley’s return to Congress in 1896 would be the forge for America’s first voting alliance of workingmen and manufacturing capitalists, which won him the White House twice.  

The era of McKinley tariff protection lasted from 1880 to 1920. In 1880, the American steel industry struggled to expand against British steel’s supremacy but flourished under the McKinley tariffs. Steel production went from 1.3 million tons in 1880 to 11.2 million tons in 1900 to 28.3 million tons in 1910. In 1898, the American steel industry surpassed Britain in pig iron production. The U.S. gross national product grew from an estimated $11 billion in 1880 to $18.7 billion in 1890 to $35.3 billion in 1910. The American glass industry was another struggling industry in 1880 due to imports. By 1910, the McKinley tariffs reversed the trend, and the glass industry had increased its output five to tenfold. During the peak tariff years of 1896 to 1901 under President McKinley, steel production increased 111%, electrical equipment production increased 271%, and farm equipment increased 149%. During the same period, wages increased by 10% and employment by 20%. Even more impressive to free traders, prices fell as productivity and innovation mushroomed. Macro and microeconomic data of the period continue to be debated, but McKinley won the working-class dinner table.

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SCANDAL IN NEW YORK! Governor Kathy Hochul, “The Queen of Corruption,” Allegedly Rigged to $9 Billion Medicaid Contract.

An explosive lawsuit accused this darling of the Democratic left to have shamelessly manipulated the bidding process for a massive Medicaid contract—a program partially funded by the federal government—to favor her out-of-state cronies. The prize? A cool $9 billion.

Yes, you read that right: $9 billion! This isn’t a typo—it’s the size of the foot Hochul could have allegedly been rigged to fatten the pockets of his pals while everyday New Yorkers watch their healthcare system crumble.

Welcome to the circus of progressive corruption, where hypocrisy is the currency and taxpayers are the clowns.

The accusation targets the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP), designed to help the most vulnerable with in-home healthcare.

Hochul and his administration allegedly twisted the bidding process to hand the judgment contract to an out-of-state company, bypassing all transparency and fair competition.

The result? A firm with no roots in the state pocketed control of a vital program, while local providers were left high and dry.ADVERTISEMENT

Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres, in a rare moment of clarity for someone from his party, blew the lid off the scandal and demanded an investigation .

Torres points out that this company started hiring staff for the contract before it was even officially announced!

Coincidence? Please—this reeks of a fix from Albany to Manhattan.

Torres didn’t mince words: “There’s something rotten in the state of New York under Kathy Hochul’s watch.” And he’s right, even if it’s a Democrat saying it.

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Elon Musk Explains the ‘Non-Profit’ Grift That George Soros Has Been Running on the U.S. Government and Taxpayers 

During an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast this weekend, Elon Musk explained how left wing billionaire George Soros has perfected the art of fleecing American taxpayers by using non-profit organizations (NGOs) to advance his progressive agenda.

Musk suggests that once one of these organizations is established, they can then lobby the U.S. government for millions in grants and other forms of aid and that there is little to no accountability.

This is one of the reasons why the left is freaking out about DOGE and the exposure of these grifts. DOGE represents an existential threat to the left’s ability to fund their political machine.

Transcript via Real Clear Politics:

ELON MUSK: It’s a gigantic scam—one of the biggest, maybe the biggest scam ever.

JOE ROGAN: And how many NGOs are there?

ELON MUSK: I think the total number of NGOs is probably in the millions, but in terms of large NGOs—tens of thousands.

It’s actually kind of a hack to the system where someone can get an NGO stood up for a fairly small amount of money. George Soros was really good at this. He’s like a system hacker. He figured out how to hack the system. He’s a genius at arbitrage. I mean, these days, he’s pretty old, but he was a genius at arbitrage.

He figured out that you could leverage a small amount of money to create a nonprofit, then lobby politicians to send a ton of money to that nonprofit. So you can take what might be a $10 million donation to create a nonprofit and leverage that into a billion-dollar NGO.

And “nonprofit” is a weird word. It’s just a non-governmental organization. The government continues to fund it every year, and it’ll have a nice-sounding name like The Institute for Peace or something like that. But really, it’s a graft machine.

JOE ROGAN: And what are the requirements for that money? What do they have to do?

ELON MUSK: Really, no requirements at all.

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DOGE doubles down on ‘what did you do last week’ emails — with a new requirement

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has sent out a second mass e-mail to executive branch employees requiring them to list their weekly accomplishments by midnight Monday — but with a new requirement excepting classified information.

The new missive hit email boxes Saturday night via the Office of Personnel Management, and bore the subject line “What did you do last week? Part II,” in a callback to last week’s DOGE email that caused an uproar and confusion.

The federal employees have until 11:59 p.m. ET Monday to write an email listing 5 bullets describing what they accomplished last week.

The email added the new requirement that targeted agencies whose employees sought to be exempt from the extra paperwork due to the secretive nature of their work.

Respondents were told not to send links, attachments, or any classified or sensitive information — and were given the option to write “All of my activities are sensitive.”

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Tech Titan Microsoft Partnered Extensively with USAID on Third World Internet Projects

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) became the most visible symbol of government waste and ideological partisanship after DOGE exposed the vast sums it spent around the world promoting a variety of leftist causes including online censorship. What is less well-known is the now-shuttered agency’s work with big tech companies, notably Microsoft.

In 2023, Microsoft partnered with Internews, a USAID-funded global slush fund for journalists, to create the Media Viability Accelerator (MVA). The MVA sought to combine Microsoft’s tech resources with Internews’ global network of ideologically aligned journalists, allowing newsrooms to access market insights, data aggregation, analysis and visualization from Microsoft to support their efforts.

Microsoft and USAID also partnered on the progressive cause of women’s empowerment. A program called the Women’s Digital Inclusion Partnership saw Microsoft working with USAID to increase internet coverage for women in the third world. The program aimed to increase internet connectivity for women in rural areas of Columbia, Ghana, Guatemala, India and Kenya.

It’s unclear if this USAID-backed program was any more successful that the U.S. government’s domestic rural internet program, which according to analysts resulted in $42.5 billion in expenditure while connecting zero citizens.

Another USAID-Microsoft partnership on internet connectivity was the Airband Initiative, which aims to expand internet access around the world. The partnership brought together local coalitions of government agencies, nonprofits, and private sector companies to build digital infrastructure and provide “digital skills” training. The program aimed to expand internet access to 250 million people by the end of 2025, including 100 million people in Africa.

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Hey Elon: We Found a Place to Cut More Than $2 Trillion in Wasteful Spending

Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency began its cost-cutting efforts by dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, which spends about $22 billion per year, about 0.3 percent of overall federal spending. DOGE has since targeted agencies focused on children’s education, protecting the natural world, and food safety.

But after more than a month running roughshod through government, DOGE has made strikingly few cuts at the Pentagon, whose bloated budget tips the scales at around $850 billion — accounting for about 13 percent of federal spending.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth encouraged DOGE to hack away at his department on X last week. “We welcome DOGE and finding those efficiencies is how we save taxpayer dollars.” But experts question just how open the Pentagon really is to DOGE, and whether Musk’s merry band of bean-counters has the mettle to do battle with the Department of Defense and its backers.

On DOGE’s “Agency Efficiency Leaderboard,” which shows some of the largest “savings” it has claimed to achieve, the Defense Department is currently wallowing in 16th place out of a total of 22 spots. It’s an especially dismal showing since Defense is the largest government agency, with a budget rocketing toward $1 trillion per year, and has failed seven straight annual audits. The U.S. military budget is the largest in the world — more than triple that of China, 8.5 times higher than Russia, and exceeds the next nine countries combined. Military expenditures are the largest component of discretionary spending in the U.S. budget and are projected to rise over the next decade.

If agencies devoted to saving lives — such as the Department of Health and Human Services or USAID — are on the chopping block, a department that has spent some $8 trillion on foreign wars since 9/11 deserves a close look by DOGE. Potential cuts aren’t hard to find: The Intercept easily sketched a road map amounting to more than $75 billion in annual savings for Musk and DOGE — and as much as $2 trillion over the next decade.

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DOGE Cuts Fauci-Funded Animal Testing in China

President Donald Trump is picking up where he left off in 2020 and cutting funding to animal testing labs in China.

Days after White Coat Waste Project famously exposed Anthony Fauci’s funding for gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in April 2020, President Trump went on national TV and called it “tremendous waste” and said he’d “end it very quickly.” And he did.

Now, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is taking action to de-fund other animal tests in China.

DOGE just announced a series of NIH cuts made today, including “$135K for a research grant to China Medical University in Shenyang, China.”

While the DOGE post on X didn’t include many details, WCW immediately identified the project as a Fauci-funded animal testing grant they sent to DOGE earlier this month on a list of over $1.4 billion in NIH animal testing projects to cut in the US, China and other countries.

According to the NIH’s database, the grant received $135,000 in 2024 and a total of $677,000 from Fauci’s NIAID. The Fauci-funded experiments at CMU involved infecting rabbits and mice with malaria, and infesting mice with mosquitoes so that the insects could feed on their blood.

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After Zelensky’s Ungrateful and Impertinent Display at the Oval Office, Trump Team and DOGE Move Swiftly To Audit Hundreds of Billions in US Aid to Ukraine

A lot has been written about the ‘blowout’ between Donald J. Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, or the ‘smackdown’ imposed by Trump and VP JD Vance over the increasingly frustrated Ukrainian leader.

Trump called it a very meaningful meeting where the truth was arrived at under fire and pressure, and it seems that the doors of the White House are closed to ungrateful, impertinent Zelensky.

‘This is beyond a worst-case scenario for Ukraine’, commented The Telegraph journalist Roland Oliphant, on the joint appearance by Zelensky and Trump going sideways.

“’A diplomatic disaster. There is no other way to describe it. Of all the possible outcomes of today’s high-stakes meeting at the White House, Vladimir Zelensky and Donald Trump shouting at each other was not what anyone portrayed. then beyond the worst-case scenario. With those words, months – years – of careful diplomacy by Ukrainian officials and diplomats went up in smoke. When the smoke cleared, Ukrainian-American relations were left lying in a pool of blood’, he wrote.”

Immediately, Secretary of State Marco Rubio Terminated US Support of Ukraine’s Power Grid, while rumors state that Trump is about to end ALL military aid to Ukraine.

Another one of the first consequences – and a potentially damaging one to Zelensky’s tarnished reputation, is the decision to step up and accelerate the audit of the hundreds of Billions in US aid to Ukraine, a fortune that no one is really sure where it went.

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Trump Administration Considers Pulling Taxpayer Funds for Moderna’s Bird Flu Shot

The Trump administration is reportedly reconsidering the $590 million contract the Biden administration awarded to drug giant Moderna for an mRNA bird flu shot.

An initial report of the news at Bloomberg was critical of the move and referred to Moderna as being “known for its highly successful Covid-19 shot.”

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now President Donald Trump’s top health official, has been a vaccine skeptic and openly criticized Covid-19 shots,” the Bloomberg report stated. “In 2021, during the height of the pandemic, Kennedy called them ‘the deadliest vaccine ever made.’ According to the US National Institutes of Health, which now answers to Kennedy, Covid vaccines saved tens of millions of lives during the pandemic.”

The Wall Street Journal reported today that, in the wake of the news of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) review of the Biden move to fund its mRNA shot, Moderna shares fell 3%. Reuters reported the pharmaceutical company’s shares “fell 5.5% in after-market trading.”

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